IFFCO to move “vast majority” of IT activities offshore

UAE-based retail manufacturer IFFCO has disclosed plans to shift its IT operations to India as a means of cutting overall costs

UAE-based retail manufacturer IFFCO has disclosed plans to shift its IT operations to India as a means of cutting overall costs. Support will be consolidated globally, while an Indian datacentre is also on the cards in the second half of this year.

Group IT director Anamitra Roy supplies further details: “We are moving more and more towards a centralised service operation here. Within the next 12 to 24 months, we have plans to move the vast majority of our activities to India which is definitely a much cheaper way of operating. We are becoming a more global company and will be more outside the UAE than in the UAE – even today, our infrastructure is more outside the UAE than inside it."

The firm operates in 11 countries across 55 locations, with 12 manufacturing sites. Roy states that support will be repositioned globally and virtually based, as opposed to being dependent on one physical location. The firm already has a Tier Two-rated datacentre at its main office in Sharjah’s Port Khalid, and is now drawing up plans for a Tier One installation in India.

Roy defends the decision to build a simpler datacentre: “We don’t really have a mission-critical application as such. We don’t want to invest in a technology or infrastructure where the cost of operating it would be very high compared to our requirements, which are not mission-critical and can wait a little while.”